With things not going well for the Mayor and TfL on the railway front, they could have probably obtained some solace in the thought that the Mayor’s ambitious Healthy Streets policy was making good progress. Unfortunately, a first blow has been dealt by the City of Westminster with their about-turn on the planned pedestrianisation of Oxford Street. We now look at a further potential setback following a judicial review (JR) hearing brought the City of Westminster. This challenged the ...

Accounts of what is happening in the world of transport in London in the past few months have largely been focused on Crossrail and Thameslink. Whilst these two major construction projects (together totalling over £22billion) have their own problems, it should not be forgotten that other issues in the transport world continue to make their presence felt. The publicity concerning the big projects tends to mask the substantial issues that TfL are now experiencing on a lot of their smaller, but ...

There have been proposals to pedestrianise Oxford Street for many years, but until now nothing has happened. This was partly because it was regarded as too difficult and partly because the City of Westminster (who ‘own’ the road) opposed it, due to the traffic that would spill onto the surrounding streets. Deck the street The problem of mixing traffic and people in Oxford Street has been recognised for a long time. In 1963, Colin Buchanan produced a report entitled ‘Traffic in ...

Some readers may already be aware of the current consultation on the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street between Orchard Street (just to the west of Selfridges) and Oxford Circus. This is part of a programme to realise some of the Mayor’s manifesto commitments. Unfortunately, in the minds of many, the scheme has become equated with removing buses (and other remaining traffic) from this section of Oxford Street. It’s only collateral damage In reality, in the context of the overall ...

A TfL presentation delivered to Sadiq Khan, the newly elected Mayor of London, has surfaced online. It offers an insight into the transport announcements we can expect in the near future. It also indicates a clear commitment by TfL to delivering the Mayor’s manifesto pledges with particular focus on the Ultra Low Emission Zone. Delivering Your Manifesto, which first appeared on the BBC News website on Friday, showcases an intriguing mix of Sadiq Khan’s mayoral campaign and TfL branding. It ...

On the 10th December 2015 in Court Two at the Royal Courts of Justice a new case commenced. Its presence in Court Two may reflect more on the number of legal professionals present rather than its perceived importance, but one thing was true: a case that saw the Queen take on her own Secretary of State for Transport represented something very unusual indeed. “The Queen”, of course, was not personally present. Civil cases involving civil matters relevant to The Queen (or, in practice, her ...

Summarising the annual fares announcements has become something of an LR tradition. It is rare, however, that they carry the level of changes to TfL’s fare structure seen in the announcement of the latest fare increase. This year’s announcement represented not only a change in prices, but highlighted the acceleration of an evolutionary shift in the London fares structure that has been quietly under way for some time. Following on from Walthamstow Writer’s summary of the ...

The idea of extending the Bakerloo Line southwards is almost as old as the Bakerloo Line itself. One that seems to capture the imagination of rail enthusiasts, politicians and Londoners alike. It certainly ranks alongside suggestions such as re-opening disused stations, extending the Waterloo & City Line and of somehow finding a use for the former Aldwych branch of the Piccadilly Line in a considerable number of amateur and professional imaginations. Reasons for wanting to extend the ...

As many readers will be aware, over recent weeks we have been taking an in-depth look at London 2050. Published in July by the Mayor and directed by Isabel Dedring and many GLA staff, TfL and other colleagues, The London Infrastructure Plan 2050 is an attempt to provide the London of today with a blueprint for transitioning to the London of tomorrow. In The Trillion Pound Time Warp we took a look at the context behind the report and some of the high-level plans and costings in play. Last week, ...

Londoners with a particular interest in politics and planning may have noticed a new phrase appear in the lexicon of both in recent months – London 2050. In this article we take a closer look at precisely what that phrase means, and how thinking is shaping up so far. For when it comes to transport infrastructure 2050 is far closer than one might think.

In Part 1, we introduced the many components that need to be integrated into the grand plan at Old Oak Common (OOC), for a new interchange with HS2, Crossrail, the Great Western Mainline (GWML) and Overground services. Here in Part 2 we take a step back to look at the implications and explore some nagging questions, which we’ll conclude in Part 3 along with a tentative stab at how the decision-making might unfold in the near future. OOC has grown into a very large project indeed. The ...